Three More John Silence Stories | Page 4

of his sentimental journey,
and the priest looked up sharply at him with raised eyebrows and an
expression of surprise and suspicion that somehow piqued him. He
ascribed it to his difference of belief.
"Yes," went on the silk merchant, pleased to talk of what his mind was
so full, "and it was a curious experience for an English boy to be
dropped down into a school of a hundred foreigners. I well remember
the loneliness and intolerable Heimweh of it at first." His German was
very fluent.
The priest opposite looked up from his cold veal and potato salad and
smiled. It was a nice face. He explained quietly that he did not belong
here, but was making a tour of the parishes of Wurttemberg and Baden.
"It was a strict life," added Harris. "We English, I remember, used to
call it Gefängnisleben--prison life!"
The face of the other, for some unaccountable reason, darkened. After a
slight pause, and more by way of politeness than because he wished to
continue the subject, he said quietly--
"It was a flourishing school in those days, of course. Afterwards, I have
heard--" He shrugged his shoulders slightly, and the odd look--it almost
seemed a look of alarm--came back into his eyes. The sentence
remained unfinished.

Something in the tone of the man seemed to his listener uncalled for--in
a sense reproachful, singular. Harris bridled in spite of himself.
"It has changed?" he asked. "I can hardly believe--"
"You have not heard, then?" observed the priest gently, making a
gesture as though to cross himself, yet not actually completing it. "You
have not heard what happened there before it was abandoned--?"
It was very childish, of course, and perhaps he was overtired and
overwrought in some way, but the words and manner of the little priest
seemed to him so offensive--so disproportionately offensive--that he
hardly noticed the concluding sentence. He recalled the old bitterness
and the old antagonism, and for a moment he almost lost his temper.
"Nonsense," he interrupted with a forced laugh, "Unsinn! You must
forgive me, sir, for contradicting you. But I was a pupil there myself. I
was at school there. There was no place like it. I cannot believe that
anything serious could have happened to--to take away its character.
The devotion of the Brothers would be difficult to equal anywhere--"
He broke off suddenly, realising that his voice had been raised unduly
and that the man at the far end of the table might understand German;
and at the same moment he looked up and saw that this individual's
eyes were fixed upon his face intently. They were peculiarly bright.
Also they were rather wonderful eyes, and the way they met his own
served in some way he could not understand to convey both a reproach
and a warning. The whole face of the stranger, indeed, made a vivid
impression upon him, for it was a face, he now noticed for the first time,
in whose presence one would not willingly have said or done anything
unworthy. Harris could not explain to himself how it was he had not
become conscious sooner of its presence.
But he could have bitten off his tongue for having so far forgotten
himself. The little priest lapsed into silence. Only once he said, looking
up and speaking in a low voice that was not intended to be overheard,
but that evidently was overheard, "You will find it different." Presently
he rose and left the table with a polite bow that included both the

others.
And, after him, from the far end rose also the figure in the tweed suit,
leaving Harris by himself.
He sat on for a bit in the darkening room, sipping his coffee and
smoking his fifteen-pfennig cigar, till the girl came in to light the oil
lamps. He felt vexed with himself for his lapse from good manners, yet
hardly able to account for it. Most likely, he reflected, he had been
annoyed because the priest had unintentionally changed the pleasant
character of his dream by introducing a jarring note. Later he must seek
an opportunity to make amends. At present, however, he was too
impatient for his walk to the school, and he took his stick and hat and
passed out into the open air.
And, as he crossed before the Gasthaus, he noticed that the priest and
the man in the tweed suit were engaged already in such deep
conversation that they hardly noticed him as he passed and raised his
hat.
He started off briskly, well remembering the way, and hoping to reach
the village in time to have a word with one of the Brüder. They might
even ask him in for a cup of coffee. He felt sure of his welcome, and
the old